


a storm calls

by spidersrorg



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: M/M, leoniles exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11362875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidersrorg/pseuds/spidersrorg
Summary: Leo's room is warm, but Niles prefers the window's chill.Niles struggles with memories while Leo rests upon him.





	a storm calls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanyoushi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanyoushi/gifts).



The sound of rain was harsh, not calming in any sense. Nohr’s summer storms had arrived early that year, thunder rumbling even the stone walls of Castle Krakenburg. While the castle walls held a barrier between man and nature, the city below was likely worried for floods.

  
Niles sat in the window seat of his lord’s chambers, leaning against the panes. The cold wafted through the glass, cool on his cheek. Despite the enchanted fire Leo had burning in the room, there was a chill in the little nook. He was used to cold nights with only a bottle to keep him warm, but in years of castle life he’d grown soft. With that, he shivered.   
  


“You’ll catch your death sitting there.”

 

Niles didn’t turn to look at the speaker, didn’t need to. There were only they two in the room.

 

He did turn when a blanket fluttered down and settled over him.

 

His lord had a soft smile on his face. He crouched and climbed in under the blanket, snuggling in against Niles. He pulled the blanket up around them properly, a fluffy quilt with some sort of design lost to the wrinkles from draping over their bodies. 

 

“You’ll put me to sleep in your unnaturally warm room, milord. Does your retainer need not to stay attentive?”

 

“The door’s barred, Niles. You can relax.”   
  
Niles chuckled. “I suppose.” 

 

A loud crack of thunder shook the window. He lost his smile at that. The rain was harsh. He remembered days when that was a threat to him.

 

His lord, however, had his smile grow, snuggled in further. “Days like these are good for reading. An excuse to take the day off. No riders can be sent out with correspondence... no training can be done…”   
  
“True. The training grounds are probably flooded,” Niles hummed, his mind still wandering.    
  
Nohr’s dry earth didn’t hold up to the country’s strong storms. In years past, Niles would have to abandon where he hunkered down in the gutters, the rain flooding them. In the parts of the Windmire where the tunnels hadn’t been built, the streets themselves would flood. And those were the only parts of town that Niles could flee to. 

 

Niles jumped when a finger was jammed into his cheek. Apparently he’d been lost in his thoughts all alone for a while. 

 

“...No comments about mud wrestling in the training grounds? Where has my Niles gone?”

 

“Well, well, it seems milord has some things on the mind,” Niles purred and wrapped his arms around Leo under the blanket. He nosed against Leo’s ear and opened his lips to speak again, but was interrupted.

 

“It seems my retainer is the one with things on the mind.”

 

A grin tugged at Niles’ lips and he laughed, “The same things as milord, I hope?”

 

However, Leo lost his smile, “I’ve nary a clue what’s going on in your head, Niles.”

 

Niles’ expression followed suit. He took a breath and leaned back, putting some distance in he and Leo’s snuggle. His head settled against the window’s cool glass once more, his breath now fogging the clear view of the castle town.

 

Vaguely, he heard his lord sigh, but his focus was no longer with him. Niles was not afraid of storms. He was scarcely afraid of anything. At least, nothing tangible. Snakes nor spiders shocked him, but the feelings within his chest were foreign. What there was between he and the man atop him. Those things were what scared him, but in those things he also felt safe. He trusted his lord.

 

But he didn’t trust his own memories. The way lightning flashed, also brought flashes of his past behind his eyes. There were only glimpses. He could remember facts of the many things that had happened in his life, sure. But images, the sights and sounds, those things had been far repressed. One of the castle medics had a field day the time Niles was brought in after a blow to the head. That medic had been disappointed once realizing that there was no head-trauma related cause, that their study of the brain would not be having him as a subject.

 

Whatever were in those memories, they did frighten him. He would never admit it, not to anyone. Those were deep, instinctual fears. Something that stirred deep in him and made his eye widen when encountered, but the feeling incapable of being name. Rarely could he recall what had happened, why in an instance he had a flash of feelings wrangled forward from out of his past.

 

Perhaps this storm was doing just that to him. Bringing back times of turbulence and insecurity, times where each day had Fate making a new attempt on his life.

 

With Leo in his arms, his past seemed far away. But it was always there behind his eyelids.

 

Lightning flashed, and he laughed.

 

“You know, milord, I once saw a man struck by lightning.”

“Mm? I, too. Camilla’s a fright with that tome of hers.”

 

“No. Natural lightning. Dusk Dragon’s wrath and all that.”

 

Leo shifted and turned to look back at him, expecting a story.

 

Occasionally Niles would divulge, but he didn’t need Leo knowing of the grisly details of his past. Every time it was brought up, there was a niggling feeling at the back of his thoughts. Leo would rethink things, Leo would send him out. He would wonder why he ever hired such scum of a man, let him into his bed, let him into his heart.

 

This time, he supposed he could share. It was a rare instance where, behind his eye, he had an image of what had occurred. An actual memory to accompany the fact. 

 

“The streets were flooding, and one of our boys knew a house was empty. Thought it’d be a good idea to get in through the chimney,” Niles had his eye closed, trying to remember, “I was holding the ladder steady… he was up first… And that was it.”

 

He opened his eye and set his chin on the top of Leo’s head. He hummed a little, “It really is Dragon’s wrath, nothing like your sister’s tome. He just splashed in the water next to me. Didn’t even flop like a fish.”

 

It grew quiet for a while. Leo always ate up new information, always rolled it over in his head to connect it with things he’d read. He could think quickly, sure, it was part of what made his lord a genius. When he had the time to think things through at length, Leo was by far the most fearsome man Niles had ever met. Those times, when he was one of Leo’s pawns it was exhilarating, nearly libidinous. But now he was on a receiving end, and knew not what Leo was piecing together in his mind.

 

Leo finally shifted, worming out of Niles’ arms to turn to look Niles in the face, “...Are you afraid of lightning, then? Why sit by the window in a storm…?”

 

“No, nothing of that sort,” Niles snorted, “I’ve no such petty fears.”

 

Leo raised a brow, “The storm, then?”

 

“You think little of me, Lord Leo,” Niles shook his head.

 

“...It’s never occurred to me what weight storms have, down there. The flooding you mentioned. I’ll bring it up to Xander when next I may.”

 

“...If that is what comforts you, milord,” Niles usually just let Leo speak when he began with politics, protocol, the like. Let Leo voice his ideas, to get them out. But Niles himself hadn’t a care for law. Leo was his law.

 

Niles’ brow furrowed, “You needn’t have guilt for anything that happened to me in my life, Leo.”

 

A deep sigh came from his lord, “I know, but…you were down there, while I was safe, up here.”

 

“...But I am here now.”

 

Leo’s cheeks seemed to grow pink, not the bright red he had when embarrassed, but a different tinge. Softer. A little smile pulled at his lips. 

 

A breath full of sweet sound came from Leo’s lips. His lord took a corner of the blanket and cozied into Niles, their chests now pressed together. He settled his head onto Niles’ shoulder, nose pressed to his neck.

 

The words Leo spoke were soft, a sweet whisper against Niles’ skin, “Yes. Now you are here. With me. Safe.”

 

At those words, the storm outside faded. The energy rattling Niles’ bones settled, dispersed. He was with Leo. 

 

His own safety wasn’t something he frequently fretted himself over. Not since Leo had taken him in. Leo had been, was, his everything, what he needed to protect. 

 

But now that he knew he held Leo’s heart…perhaps that was what gave him the reason to care for himself.

 

Niles was with Leo. 

 

“Safe.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> for mira!


End file.
